revised meaning of life

There are over two billion people in the world. Each one has there own opinion on the meaning of life, even if it is there is no meaning. In order to see other people’s answers I went around asking people questions of the meaning of life. I ask how important there life was on a scale of 1-10, what made their life meaningful, and if they liked their life. I asked strangers, friends and family. I realized that the wealthier they were or looked, the lamer and more generic there answers were.The first person I asked was a white business man. The first question was “On a scale of one to ten how meaningful is your life?” He replied “Ten”. “How so?” I asked. He once again replied with a small answer “Because I’m alive and that’s what is important.” This was similar to the answers I got from most wealthy looking people. Another business man replied “A full ten because I live in this great country.” It seemed that the richer they looked the faker the answer seemed.


The middle class people’s answers were much more scattered. One white middle class man said “I like my life because of my friends and trees.” When I asked him to clarify what he meant by trees and he said he meant nature, and not marijuana. While this answer was unique it was a little dull. The most interesting answer came from a working class Latino man when asked what makes life meaningful he replied “Helping other people because your life is meaningless unless you change some one else’s” This answer is exactly like mine. It seemed that the middle class people were more humble then the upper class, but still had lame answers.

The deepest and most meaningful answer from strangers came from a homeless person. When asked what made her life meaningful she replied “Man, I use to go to school, life was stupid. Then I did drugs, life was different but still not meaningful. Now I’m a hopeless addict and life is still as meaningless as it ever was. The only difference between the different lives is I went through different problems.” This was the most interesting to me. It gave me the perspective that there is no meaning to life. The point of life is to deal with the problems handed to you. This made sense because the wealthier a person is the fewer problems they usually have. From the answers I got the wealthier they are the more they find life meaningful. It seems those who have the easiest lives think they have the most meaningful ones.

While some seem to have put much thought in it like the homeless person, others had a different view of meaningful. When asking a friend who’s name doesn’t not want mentioned how meaningful their life is she said eight. When I asked why and eight she said “I don’t know because I love it and I don’t find anything bad enough for me to make me hate my life” Even after a few tries to clear up the question I realized two things. The first thing I realized that she had not put much thought into it; and that she was confusing life being meaningful with life being enjoyable. This raises a question; is there one meaning of the word meaningful? Or are they both right, or are some people wrong and other rights?

When I asked my family members I got the same reply “family”. I could not tell if this is what they really felt or if they were saying this because a family member was asking them and they wanted me to feel special. But I began to think about what the homeless women said about dealing with problems. Maybe family being important is one way of dealing with a problem. You are born then forced to spend every day with the same people, which sounds like a problem. The way you fix this problem is by learning to love them. This can also be seen when you spend a lot of time with a group of people. Over the summer I worked in a camp and spend everyday working with the same six kids; we became, as they say, like family. The project gave me an interesting insight into the meaning of life. The meaning of life is to deal with problems given to you. The rich have the least problems and stupidest answers. The middle class probably have a few more problems and more interesting answers. The poor has the most problems and the most meaningful answer. Family all had the same problem, so they had the same answer. There really is no meaning to life, life is just the processes of solving all the problems handed to you.